Search

Today was the last day of the annual three day Picture Postcard Show at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lawrence Hall in London. I was up in London with my wife, pretending not to be tourists, so I had chance to pop in for a couple of hours and spend some money.

It was near the end of the third and final day when I visited, so I wasn’t too surprised to find it was pretty quiet. To be honest this made things easier for me, I was able to move from stand to stand without too much trouble, and perhaps after three day the dealers were glad to be able to wind down a bit.

The theme for this year’s displays was "London; A Capital City", but because I was pushed for time I didn’t really have time to study them closely, but there were lots of displays and many of the stands were decorated with examples of postcard artwork.

Despite my limited time I was able to come away with seven cards for my collection. Two were free souvenirs, one upon entry and one for buying something from Reflections of a Bygone Age, this second one was an excellent multi-view of the Elephant Parade.

Of the remaining five, one was relatively modern (probably 30 or 40 years old) just bought for the personal connection with my new job, the other four were much older, with family connections in one way or another and once I have scanned them they will probably be appearing on this blog. I say probably because I now have far too many postcards to blog about.

Although I was never likely to come away with any truly outstanding cards for my collection, there is after all a large percentage of national and international dealers (who will probably never have heard of the small Sussex villages I am interested in), I am nevertheless happy with what I did find and could easily have spent all day there soaking up the atmosphere and just looking at cards.